Rosie:

After the library, Hall should be every Cambridge student’s favourite place. The structuring of our catered hall system has saved many of us from near starvation when the choice between making our own food or sleeping might have been a tough one. The opportunity this affords us to socialise with our peers and enjoy formal meals in a place frequented by Cambridge students for centuries should be snatched up quicker than the waffles are at brunch.

Hall is a useful alternative for those of us who either can’t or won’t cook for ourselves. Perhaps you’ve been in the library for nine hours and the idea of cooking for a further hour before eating is a prospect you simply can’t stomach. Maybe you’ve just returned from a particularly exhausting rowing outing or from an especially traumatising supervision. Maybe you’re just lazy. Catered halls are a blessing in any of the above situations. Studying here is time-consuming and leaves little time for leisure activities, such as feeding yourself. But instead we are provided with a hearty meal of meat and three types of potato, guaranteed to fuel a further 3-4 hours in the library.

The subsidisation of meals is also a benefit of our catered halls. The average meal cost is extremely low at £3 and the use of Cam cards in canteens even allows us to effectively ignore these costs until the end of term – why cross a bridge before you’ve got there? Instead of questioning these seemingly low prices we should be grateful for them; even a Big Mac meal is more expensive than Hall. Think on that (although maybe not for too long).

Formals are also a benefit of our catered Hall system. The opportunity to dine on a three course meal in a 14th Century Hall is not something you would find at every university and formal can be a perfect way to celebrate a birthday or to show visitors a glimpse of how the other half live. The extremely reasonable price of around £10-£15 means that formal can be attended more than once a term, and allows us to socialise in an environment which, in true Cambridge style, is both ostentatious and wild at the same time.

While it is true that the functioning of our catered Halls is not perfect, stale waffles are better than none – especially when smothered in the sweet syrup of value for money.

Lana:

Bland. Cheap. The same as last week. No, I’m not talking about the contents of the Tab. Food served from the college hall or buttery is not a key part of university life, but an unnecessary burden carried by the wallets of the student population. It allows us to avoid learning one of the most basic skills needed for survival: provision of food. Real life remains but an illusionary shadow on the wall of the Cantabrigian cave that we all find ourselves chained to.

Hall – if you’ll pardon the pun – does not cater for everyone. Vegetarian dishes are wanting, and vegan options are non-existent. Anyone who eats Halal or Kosher will struggle to eat well from the canteen. As someone whose diet is restricted by allergies, I often find myself stuck for choices. The accommodating service that one would expect from such a supposed centre of community falls flat: I pay my college almost £200 per term to produce food that I am physically unable to eat. There is a significant minority who are not properly provided for, not including those who would simply prefer to cook for themselves.

A buttery provides an unsatisfactory solution to several college problems. Some people become so swamped with work that they are unable to find time to cook. The answer to this should not be to make meal-times quicker: it is hardly over-demanding and self-indulgent to be allowed enough time to eat. Most kitchens are under-equipped, meaning that cooking proper meals is impossible for some: making the Kitchen Fixed Charge (KFC) an opt-in payment, which still serves but charges higher prices to those who do not pay it, does not seem to be pushing the boundaries of logic too far.

The compulsory KFC epitomises this institution’s ability to bully its residents. Cambridge students are constantly aware that resisting university authority comes at a price. Like naughty children, we are kept in line with the threat that our degrees will be confiscated. The paternalistic administration of Cambridge University needs to become more flexible, to accommodate for our increasingly diverse demographic. I thought that they would have developed a more sophisticated method of keeping control than stealing our lunch money.